Love in the Darkness. The Story of a Modern Love.
PEDRO HUGO GARCÍA PELÁEZ
Translated by Morwenna Fellows
“Love in the Darkness. The Story of a Modern Love.”
Written By PEDRO HUGO GARCÍA PELÁEZ
Copyright © 2017 PEDRO HUGO GARCÍA PELÁEZ
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by Morwenna Fellows
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Love in the Darkness. The Story of a Modern Love.
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Isaan and Moyna had lived parallel lives since their tender youths, and yet they did not know each other personally.
There were two years between them and he went to a boy’s school and she to another school that was solely for girls and that was separated by a wall. There was such a vast number of children on either side of the wall that it was unlikely that they would meet, despite being so close. When I say a wall I do not imply it figuratively; the girls’ school was on an upper level, the wall was about ten metres high and the boys’ school was beneath it. They grew up on either side of this wall without meeting.
They even had friends in common, but still they did not meet.
Yunai was one of Isaan’s friends and he had a sister who showed an interest in Isaan, and as she was a friend of Moyna’s she must have told her but Moyna must not have taken any notice. Isaan would be just one more person in the darkness of Madrid in the early seventies, yet for Moyna this must have been the first time that she became aware of Isaan’s existence, but it would not be the last.
In these circumstances it could be said that Isaan and Moyna lived parallel lives; almost bonded, but separated by a wall in time, and almost together in space. Two people can live virtually hand in hand, even ten metres apart, and not see each other. For two people to meet time is essential, for the eyes of two people to cross they must have found each other in space and time. Even though both are born at almost the same time and study almost side by side, they must coincide in both space and time.
Although space is made up of three dimensions it can be simplified into one. There would therefore be two variables, space and time. In the case of Moyna and Isaan, despite being very close, this did not result in them catching each other’s eye.
Life at school was arduous for them both, they did not know that society outside of the walls was hard and so, even though the two of them lived well, they complained for no reason.
They both had excellent relationships with their classmates but they kept their distance, they were intelligent and envy is never far away. Besides they wished to exceed their classmates, and they did.
Even so, everything that surrounded the world of Isaan and Moyna was repulsive. Everything was designed so that they would continue this type of life that seemed predetermined by destiny, which was ultimately a deceit. It was all an embellishment that was dressed and removed as if it were a macabre game. In fact they would both feel a sense of belonging when they briefly conversed with a beggar, a policeman, or some kind-hearted bandit, far removed from that world where they were figures in a picture-perfect family.
Their parents were concerned with them being the best, as were the school priests and nuns, but at the slightest failure they were thrown aside like a pair of rag dolls.
Their fathers, the priests and the nuns that guided Isaan and Moyna’s destinies were sheer bureaucrats and economists with little sensitivity, and from whom they could hope for nothing. Only their mothers escaped.
Even a large part of their extended families were a bunch of fools, but they could not be wholly blamed as they too had enough to endure; and so Isaan and Moyna could not hope for anything from them either. These family members had a part to play in the story just as Isaan and Moyna did, in spite of not being fully aware of it.
Time passed, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. The school years went by swiftly, one after the other, on one side of the wall as much as on the other. Neither Isaan nor Moyna had problems throughout the school years but they wished to leave the school walls behind them and discover what was beyond.
It could be said that they spent ten years side-by-side but that nothing could foretell an encounter.
Statistically though there were possibilities of them meeting.
Isaan played defence quite well and was able to play in the team that he had looked up to since he was young.
This was a great stroke of luck. Fighting against the opponent in the right way is a balm against loneliness and is character building.
He had a lot of responsibility in his team. If you play with the team that you have dreamt of since you were a five-year-old child people start to see you as a dreamer that has achieved their dream. These types of dreams are dangerous; as a five-year-old you dream of reaching there, but when you arrive it is like you loose your mind.
People expect a lot from you but they still do not forgive you for your mistakes.
Indeed, coming second in the school league was a rung below best, people did not forgive Isaan for this. It seemed as though loosing a simple match, even if it was the final, would drive the people to consider Isaan a looser in free fall. They did not value what it had cost him to get there. The people only valued him for a simple ninety minute long match.
Back to the topic of Isaan’s dream to play with his team, Isaan wasn’t very disciplined and so sometimes he would miss training. Although people think that those that make it are all very strong, the truth is that they are mistaken; many leave sport out of laziness, to follow other aspirations, or simply because they are tired of it. In fact, throughout his life Isaan met a lot of people that this had happened to.
As a matter of fact starting to leave that door open prefigured the start of Isaan’s free fall; contrary to the belief of many, your life can change in a second.
Nonetheless the good time that he had when he was included in the team was priceless because sometimes this was indispensable in order to win matches, and that more than made up for it all.
Be that as it may, this sporting experience changed something in Isaan, and since those days he began to search for new aims and to close the book on that which he had finished, as he considered that his sporting goal had been accomplished. Now he would have to look for new challenges.
He was popular and so was she; they were both born to wealthy parents but not out of love. They lived well in the Madrid of the eighties, which was the epicentre of the so called ‘movida madrileña’, a counter-cultural movement. The only problem that they had was deciding which party or nightclub to go to, and if they did not have money they went to a park to drink.
Life at that time was different. People smoked on aeroplanes and trains, nobody even considered buying condoms unless it was strictly necessary.
The ‘movida madrileña’ was something that came out of nowhere, a ball that began to roll, and then inexplicably tumbled…
People lived well in those times, it must be said that you could enjoy the environment, it was like being on a Polynesian desert island after having eaten with your family on a Sunday.
There were many coincidences between Isaan and Moyna’s family lives, they both had strict families and this propelled them out onto the street in search of happiness. Isaan and Moyna were anxious
to leave their homes, like crazy people, without caring where they went. They only looked to disappear for a few hours away from their houses. In Isaan’s case, looking for new challenges as he desired to find new experiences, although in those years such experiences had been intense.
It was under these special circumstances that the first meeting took place. Curiously enough it was close to the wall that had separated them for all those years. The first meeting was going to happen, whether somebody forced the situation or whether statistically it had to happen we do not know. Isaan was heading towards one of the many parties that took place throughout the summers of the eighties. It was in a classy neighbourhood and when he left an ice-cream shop he heard a voice behind him say “Isaan can I come with you?”. It was an attractive girl, a little younger than him, and Isaan said yes…
In that moment Isaan’s heart fluttered in a way that he had never felt before. He noticed her green eyes that he would never forget, and on her wrist he saw a mark; that mark could well have been a scar from having tried to cut her veins the night before.
She was what was considered in those times to be a well-off girl and although Isaan supposed that she was one of the girls from the school next door it did not even cross his mind to think that she might be Yunai’s sister’s friend.
Isaan realised straight away that their lives had crossed. If you fix your gaze on someone for more than one second and you are attracted to that person then the memory stays with you forever. In spite of the image that they gave off a small slip in the nauseating lives that they both lived could result in either of them cutting their veins in order to escape the continuous trickle of lies that filled their lives.
Isaan could not shed off the image of the scar on Moyna’s wrist. Nonetheless his life had other worlds, both of their thoughts drifted towards something which Isaan sensed was love. They were both still very young, they had their whole lives in front of them and in those moments they only had to enjoy, there were moments in which they had everything.
In the instant just before their encounter Isaan was thinking that he would never fall in love. “What for if I have all the friends that I want?”, he thought; given that at that time he had many female friends and he didn’t pay much attention to ‘love’ in its greater sense. In fact he worried, thinking that if she had not said “Can I come with you?” the time would probably have passed, their paths would not have crossed, and he would never have experienced that feeling. However there are things that have to happen and that happen, something or someone could have forced the situation for this to happen, however it may be in Isaan’s case it was irreversible.
That impenetrable moment having passed Isaan noticed the neon green sign that hung from the door of the ice-cream shop where they had met, and they continued to walk towards the nightclub.
At once Isaan disappeared. Doubtless one of his many friends claimed him.
He understood then that Moyna was highly sought after in Madrid, every heartless man wanted to be with her, if only for the standing that she had. As a matter of fact Isaan thought “I have fallen in love with one of the most popular girls and I’m going to have a lot of competition.”, because she was a free spirit that would fit in better in a Kathmandu sunset that in Madrid. She complicated life by being free. There was something special about eighties Madrid!
Such as when Isaan, who was reclined against the windscreen of the car, saw her appear and solemnly drink up the moon rays, bathing in them at one o’clock in the morning on a towel on the pavement.
Isaan was totally settled in a comfortable position with his back against the windscreen and his legs on the car bonnet, and then he burst out laughing.
He thought, “What a magical night! Leaning here listening to music on a hot summer night in Madrid having left my favourite club.” Then Moyna, after hesitating for a moment as if analysing the situation, looked at him critically for a moment, as if to say “What an arsehole you are”, perhaps it was because she thought that he was laughing at her…
The truth was that he laughed with her, it was a comic situation that had brightened up Isaan’s night even more, if that is possible; he admired her for being someone so free within that Madrid that was sometimes so inhospitable.
This traumatised Isaan, life was not perfect and everything could change in a second; she could go with somebody else, abandon him, or worse.
The human brain sometimes goes over and over the same thing, analysing millions of variables in a second, it does so on impulses and decides whether the feeling is real or not. In fact Isaan thought that being in a relationship had only a thirty per cent chance of success, but he didn’t care. There was something about Moyna that told him she was as crazy as he. Indeed they met because it was one of those typical days when they both left their houses with the same aim, to avoid the problems that they had at home.
Isaan had a good time knowing that he had Moyna at his disposal, and she did not want to play along. This game made all his problems disappear after spending all day dancing to resolve them, his problems basically consisted of deciding where to go party and forgetting the iron discipline of home.
Everything in Isaan’s life was perfect when he forgot about his family and sometimes without forgetting it, the same as for Moyna. However, there was that unexpected look of Moyna’s that he did not know how to dominate, something he was not used to seeing as usually the whole world smiled at him.
Moyna had a big personality, or was as crazy as Isaan, one or the other or both at the same time…
You can have a big personality and be crazy, in fact many famous people possess both characteristics.
When Moyna threw him a hard look as if to say “Who do you think you are?”, it let loose the fury of the Gods in the parallel world that Isaan had where reality and dreams came together. It was an interference in Isaan’s brain, in reality it was as if they both had a brain wave length that would resonate, and that’s how it was. It was not that Isaan was irritated by Moyna’s stare, but that it totally changed the configuration of his world, at an unusual speed and on an unusual scale. Isaan could pass from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds, Moyna was an extension of his own body. In fact on an ordinary morning in those eighties years, he found Moyna sat on the grass by a swimming pool of a mutual friend, and upon seeing him she gave him a cold look, even though it was Isaan that she wanted to see. Annoyed, Isaan thought “Why does this have to happen to me?”, because Isaan lived quite well before this process that was happening with Moyna.
Moyna did not usually do it, but when she threw one of those looks, the type that make people say “If looks could kill”, Isaan took them seriously because he was not paying her attention and he knew this was not good, and probably he didn’t pay her any attention as revenge for the pride that Moyna displayed.
When the whole world was laughing and having a good time with you in that scene, and somebody brings you down with a look, it changes everything and is as if you were returned to harsh reality.
Even more so bearing in mind their lives in their different yet same families! It was torment!
When he was in a good mood Isaan fantasised about marrying Moyna and probably she would have accepted, but he continued to be unable to find time to be with her.
Yet everything was going at breakneck speed, and for two to come together obviously they must coincide in the same space and time, but the speed of both must be equal or they will separate.
One night, leaving the club, Isaan took her to his house with some friends, Isaan’s mother even met her.
In this way time went by…
One of the following nights something inexplicable happened. Isaan was coming from a party, with his green eyes open and his pupils dilated. He had taken some drugs and Isaan’s father gave him a sedative which he ordered him to take even though he was not a doctor.
Isaan took it, went to bed, and his head exploded. He had an atomic bomb inside his head, in his family’s attic room, from which
he could make out the whole city with its lights and shadows.
It was incredible! Isaan had passed from being who he was to forming part, another piece of, the repressive system. Now not only of the repressive family apparatus but of the whole society.
The following day he got up calmly, but something unexpected happened, although it could have been seen coming given the dictatorial nature of his father; that morning they locked him up in a psychiatric hospital. Although at first being there seemed like another game to Isaan, there between walls thicker than those of the school he could not continue living the life he had. The possibility of perhaps never seeing Moyna again was such a traumatic experience for Isaan that it almost drove him crazy. There were strange people, and he was not able to pass through that thick wall that separated him from freedom, and that was worse than jail.
Now he could not tear down that wall like he used to. In reality he was scared that he could be there his whole life without leaving, or that he could die trying to escape. He saw those whitewashed walls where there were people that had been there for many years and he thought that everything would end between him and Moyna, and that this was an irreversible process, that nothing could be done to revert the situation. He forgot that psychiatric world of people almost without hope of salvation, and he stayed asleep in his bedroom.
The following morning he was already thinking about how to leave behind that wall that they had put up for no reason, but they caught him again and in he went. The following day he was planning another escape, in fact Isaan could have died in one of his escapes, on one occasion he threw himself from a fourth floor flat to get out of there. Realistically, if he did not die it is because ultimately he had good luck.
Isaan knew that one way or another this would pass.
In the preceding days he was scared of what his father’s reaction might be. A few days earlier when he was with Moyna he saw hunger in her eyes, hunger to continue in the world outside of conventionalism. Then Isaan realised that what she wanted was to live a life of freedom, in a way as Isaan had done before falling. She wanted to have a kind of velvet claw with which they would respect her. Isaan had stepped off of that train, something for which Moyna would not forgive him. Moyna had been with him because in those moments they were accomplices on the same mission, but Isaan now had the noose around his neck, time had stopped and he did not even have a plan to face the situation. Although he did not believe that the branching of their paths and in general with the life and people with which he had lived until then was going to be so drastic he did not have the strength to stop what was coming at him, and that left him a bit in the hands of fate.
Love in the Darkness. The Story of a Modern Love. Page 1
